Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920, in Tacoma, Washington, to Frank Patrick Herbert, Sr. and Eileen (McCarthy) Herbert. Because of a poor home environment, he ran away from home in 1938 to live with an aunt and uncle in Salem, Oregon.[2] He enrolled in high school at Salem High School (now North Salem High School), where he graduated the next year.[2] In 1939 he lied about his age to get his first newspaper job at the Glendale Star.[3] Herbert then returned to Salem in 1940 where he worked for the Oregon Statesman newspaper (now Statesman Journal) in a variety of positions, including photographer.[2]

He served in the U.S. Navy's Seabees for six months as a photographer during World War II, then he was given a medical discharge. He married Flora Parkinson in San Pedro, California in 1940.[4] They had a daughter, Penny (b. February 16, 1942), but divorced in 1945.

In 1949 Herbert and his wife moved to California to work on the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. Here they befriended the psychologists Ralph and Irene Slattery. The Slatterys introduced Herbert to the work of several thinkers who would influence his writing, including Freud, Jung, Jaspers and Heidegger; they also familiarized Herbert with Zen Buddhism.[6]

Herbert did not graduate from the university; according to his son Brian, he wanted to study only what interested him and so did not complete the required curriculum. He returned to journalism and worked at the Seattle Star and the Oregon Statesman. He was a writer and editor for the San Francisco Examiner'sCalifornia Living magazine for a decade.

Herbert's first science fiction story, "Looking for Something", was published in the April 1952 issue of Startling Stories, then a monthly edited by Samuel Mines. Three more of his stories appeared in 1954 issues of Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories.[8] His career as a novelist began in 1955 with the serial publication of Under Pressure in Astounding from November 1955; afterward it was issued as a book by Doubleday, The Dragon in the Sea.[8] The story explored sanity and madness in the environment of a 21st-century submarine and predicted worldwide conflicts over oil consumption and production.[9] It was a critical success but not a major commercial one. During this time Herbert also worked as a speechwriter for Republican senator Guy Cordon.[10]

Herbert began researching Dune in 1959. He was able to devote himself wholeheartedly to his writing career because his wife returned to work full-time as an advertising writer for department stores, becoming the breadwinner during the 1960s. He later told Willis E. McNelly that the novel originated when he was supposed to do a magazine article on sand dunes in the Oregon Dunes near Florence, Oregon. He became too involved and ended up with far more raw material than needed for an article. The article was never written, but instead planted the seed that led to Dune.

Dune took six years of research and writing to complete and it was much longer than commercial science fiction of the time was supposed to run. Analog (the renamed Astounding, still edited by John W. Campbell) published it in two parts comprising eight installments, "Dune World" from December 1963 and "Prophet of Dune" in 1965.[8] It was then rejected by nearly twenty book publishers. One editor prophetically wrote, "I might be making the mistake of the decade, but ..."[11]

Sterling E. Lanier, an editor of Chilton Book Company (known mainly for its auto-repair manuals) had read the Dune serials and offered a $7,500 advance plus future royalties for the rights to publish them as a hardcover book.[12] Herbert rewrote much of his text.[13]Dune was soon a critical success.[11] It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965 and shared the Hugo Award in 1966 with ...And Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny.[14]Dune was the first major ecological science fiction novel, embracing a multitude of sweeping, inter-related themes and multiple character viewpoints, a method that ran through all Herbert's mature work.

Dune was not immediately a bestseller. By 1968 Herbert had made $20,000 from it, far more than most science fiction novels of the time were generating, but not enough to let him take up full-time writing. However, the publication of Dune did open doors for him. He was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's education writer from 1969 to 1972 and lecturer in general studies and interdisciplinary studies at the University of Washington (1970 – 1972). He worked in Vietnam and Pakistan as social and ecological consultant in 1972. In 1973 he was director-photographer of the television show The Tillers.[15]

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.[16]

Herbert's change in fortune was shadowed by tragedy. In 1974, Beverly underwent an operation for cancer. She lived ten more years, but her health was adversely affected by the surgery.[20] During this period, Herbert was the featured speaker at the Octocon II science fiction convention at the El Rancho Tropicana in Santa Rosa, California in October 1978; in 1979, he met anthropologist James Funaro with whom he conceived the Contact Conference. Beverly Herbert died on February 7, 1984, the same year that Heretics of Dune was published. In his afterword to 1985's Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert wrote a moving eulogy for his wife of 38 years.

In 1983, British heavy metal band Iron Maiden requested permission from Herbert's publisher to name a song on their album Piece of Mind after Dune, but were told that the author had a strong distaste for their style of music. They instead titled the song "To Tame a Land".

1984 was a tumultuous year in Herbert's life. During this same year of his wife's death, his career took off with the release of David Lynch's film version of Dune. Despite high expectations, a big-budget production design and an A-list cast, the movie drew mostly poor reviews in the United States. However, despite a disappointing response in the USA, the film was a critical and commercial success in Europe and Japan.[13]

After Beverly's death, Herbert married Theresa Shackleford in 1985, the year he published Chapterhouse: Dune, which tied up many of the saga's story threads. This would be Herbert's final single work (the anthology Eye was published that year, and Man of Two Worlds was published in 1986). He died of a massive pulmonary embolism while recovering from surgery for pancreatic cancer on February 11, 1986 in Madison, Wisconsin age 65. He was raised a Catholic but adopted Zen Buddhism as an adult.[21]

Herbert was a critic of the Soviet Union and shared many views with controversial Republican senator, Joseph McCarthy, of whom Herbert was also a distant relative and referred to as "Cousin Joe." Herbert was, however, appalled to learn of McCarthy's blacklisting of suspected Communists from working in certain careers and believed that he was endangering essential freedoms of citizens of the United States.[22] Herbert believed that governments lie to protect themselves and that, following the infamous Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon had unwittingly taught an important lesson in not trusting government.[23]

I think science fiction does help, and it points in very interesting directions. It points in relativistic directions. It says that we have the imagination for these other opportunities, these other choices. We tend to tie ourselves down to limited choices. We say, "Well, the only answer is ..." or, "If you would just ...". Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction.

— Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert used his science fiction novels to explore complex[28] ideas involving philosophy, religion, psychology, politics and ecology, which have caused many of his readers to take an interest in these areas. The underlying thrust of his work was a fascination with the question of human survival and evolution. Herbert has attracted a sometimes fanatical fan base, many of whom have tried to read everything he wrote, fiction or non-fiction, and see Herbert as something of an authority on the subject matters of his books. Indeed such was the devotion of some of his readers that Herbert was at times asked if he was founding a cult,[29] something he was very much against.

There are a number of key themes in Herbert's work:

A concern with leadership. He keenly explored the human tendency to slavishly follow charismatic leaders. He delved deeply into both the flaws and potentials of bureaucracy and government.[9]

Herbert was probably the first science fiction author to popularize ideas about ecology [30] and systems thinking. He stressed the need for humans to think both systematically and long term.[31]

The nature of sanity and madness. Frank Herbert was interested in the work of Thomas Szasz and the anti-psychiatry movement. Often, Herbert poses the question, "What is sane?", and while there are clearly insane behaviors and psychopathies as evinced by characters (Piter De Vries for instance), it is often suggested that "normal" and "abnormal" are relative terms which humans are sometimes ill-equipped to apply to one another, especially on the basis of statistical regularity.[9]

Dune and the Dune saga constitute one of the world's best-selling science fiction series and novels; Dune in particular has received widespread critical acclaim, winning the Nebula Award in 1965 and sharing the Hugo Award in 1966, and is frequently considered one of the best science fiction novels ever, if not the best.[34]Locus subscribers voted it the all-time best SF novel in 1975, again in 1987, and the best "before 1990" in 1998.[35] According to contemporary Robert A. Heinlein, Herbert's opus was "powerful, convincing, and most ingenious."[citation needed]

Dune is considered a landmark novel for a number of reasons:

Like Heinlein's 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land, Herbert's 1963 novella and 1965 novel, Dune, represented a move toward a more literary approach to the science fiction novel. Before this period, it was often said that all a science fiction novel needed to be successful was a great technological idea. Characterization and story took a distant second place.[citation needed]

Dune is a landmark of soft science fiction. Herbert deliberately suppressed technology in his Dune universe so he could address the future of humanity, rather than the future of humanity's technology. Dune considers the way humans and their institutions might change over time.[36][37]

Dune was the first major ecological science fiction novel. Frank Herbert was a great popularizer of scientific ideas; many of his fans credit Frank Herbert for introducing them to philosophy and psychology. In Dune he helped popularize the term ecology and some of the field's concepts, vividly imparting a sense of planetary awareness.[citation needed] Gerald Jonas explains in The New York Times Book Review: "So completely did Mr. Herbert work out the interactions of man and beast and geography and climate that Dune became the standard for a new subgenre of 'ecological' science fiction." As popularity of Dune rose, Herbert embarked on a lecture tour of college campuses, explaining how the environmental concerns of Dune's inhabitants were analogous to our own.[citation needed]

Dune is considered an epic example of literary world-building. The Library Journal reports that "Dune is to science fiction what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy." Arthur C. Clarke is quoted as making a similar statement on the back cover of a paper edition of Dune.[38] Frank Herbert imagined every facet of his creation. He lovingly included glossaries, quotes, documents, and histories, to bring his universe alive to his readers. No science fiction novel before it had so vividly realized life on another world.[9]

Herbert wrote more than twenty novels after Dune that are regarded as being of variable quality. Books like The Green Brain, The Santaroga Barrier seemed to hark back to the days before Dune, when a good technological idea was all that was needed to drive a sci-fi novel. And some fans of the Dune saga are critical of the follow-up novels as being subpar.[citation needed]

Herbert never again equalled the critical acclaim he received for Dune. Neither his sequels to Dune nor any of his other books won a Hugo or Nebula Award, although almost all of them were New York Times Best Sellers.[citation needed][39] Some felt that Children of Dune was almost too literary and too dark to get the recognition it may have deserved; others felt that The Dosadi Experiment lacked an epic quality that fans had come to expect.[citation needed]

Largely overlooked because of the concentration on Dune was Herbert's 1973 novel, Hellstrom's Hive, with its minutely worked-out depiction of a human society modeled on social insects, which could be counted a major utopia/dystopia.

Much of Herbert's work makes difficult reading. His ideas were genuinely developed concepts, not merely decorative notions, but they were sometimes embodied in excessively complicated plots and articulated in prose which did not always match the level of thinking ... His best novels, however, were the work of a speculative intellect with few rivals in modern science fiction.[40]

A film of the novel, Dune, was directed by David Lynch in 1984. Although it was panned by some fans and film critics, it was nominated for an Academy Award and later became a popular and favorite cult classic over time, selling well in special-release DVDs. The film was more successful in Europe than in the United States. Frank Herbert was reportedly pleased with the movie, as it stayed more committed to the book than earlier movie adaptation attempts, although he had his reservations on its failures at the time, citing the lack of "imagination" in its marketing estimation costs and some of the filmmaker's production techniques.[44]

^"SCI FI Channel Auction to Benefit Reading Is Fundamental". PNNonline.org (Internet Archive). March 18, 2003. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved September 28, 2007. Since its debut in 1965, Frank Herbert's Dune has sold over 12 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling science fiction novel of all time ... Frank Herbert's Dune saga is one of the greatest 20th Century contributions to literature.

^"Well, I did read some Heinlein. I shouldn't really tie it down to ten years because I had read H. G. Wells. I'd read Vance, Jack Vance, and I became acquainted with Jack Vance about that time ... I read Poul Anderson." Vertex Magazine Interview at the Wayback Machine (archived October 21, 2012) with Frank Herbert, by Paul Turner. October 1973 Volume 1, Issue 4.

^ abcFrank Herbert at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 2013-04-24. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.

^Herbert, Brian. Dreamer of Dune : The Biography of Frank Herbert. New York: Tor Books, 2003, pg. 257-258, ISBN 0-765-30646-8 "[Frank Herbert completed] a half-hour documentary film based upon field work he had done with Roy Prosterman in Pakistan [and] Vietnam ... Entitled The Tillers, it was written, filmed and directed by Frank Herbert. ... it appeared on King Television in Seattle and on the Public Broadcasting System."

^Herbert, Frank P. (1987), Chapterhouse: Dune, New York, New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, Ace Books, pg. 436, ISBN 0-441-10267-0. "It was typical of her that she wanted me to call the radiologist whose treatment in 1974 was the proximate cause of her death and thank him..."

^Anderson, Kevin J. (November 22, 2014). "Off the Radar". KJAblog.com. Archived from the original on December 8, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2015.

^"With its blend (or sometimes clash) of complex intellectual discourse and Byzantine intrigue, Dune provided a template for FH's more significant later works. Sequels soon began to appear which carried on the arguments of the original in testingly various manners and with an intensity of discourse seldom encountered in the sf field. Dune Messiah (1969) elaborates the intrigue at the cost of other elements, but Children of Dune (1976) recaptures much of the strength of the original work and addresses another recurrent theme in FH's work - the evolution of Man, in this case into SUPERMAN;..." "Frank Herbert," The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

^"When I was quite young ... I began to suspect there must be flaws in my sense of reality ... But I had been produced to focus on objects (things) and not on systems (processes)." Frank Herbert, "Doll Factory, Gun Factory", (1973 Essay), reprinted in The Maker of Dune:Thoughts of a Science Fiction Master edited by Tim O'Reilly. Berkley Books, 1987 ISBN 0425097854

^"Frank Herbert's true stroke of genius consisted ... in inviting a way of thinking about humanity, history, religion, and politics as complex and interdependent as ecosystems themselves". Jeffery Nicholas, Dune and Philosophy:Weirding Way of Mentat. Open Court Publishing, 2011 ISBN 0812697154, (p.149).

^O'Reilly, Tim. Frank Herbert. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc. ,1981. (pp.59-60) ISBN 0-8044-2666-X . "Much of the Bene Gesserit technology of consciousness is based on the insights of general semantics, a philosophy and training method developed in the 1930s by Alfred Korzybski. Herbert had studied general semantics in San Francisco at about the time he was writing Dune. (At one point, he worked as a ghostwriter for a nationally syndicated column by S. I. Hayakawa, one of the foremost proponents of general semantics.)"

^"His dominant intellectual impulse was not to mystify or set himself up as a prophet, but the opposite – to turn what powers of analysis he had (and they were considerable) over to his audience. And this impulse is as manifest in Dune, which many people consider the all-time best science fiction novel, as it is in his computer book, Without Me You're Nothing. ppg 2, Touponce 1988

^ abSpeaking at the 2006 induction of Herbert in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Kevin J. Anderson stated that Children of Dune (1976) "was the first SF novel ever to hit the New York Times bestseller list." Dune 7 Blog: Wednesday, June 21, 2006: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. By KJA. Dune: The Official Website. Retrieved 2011-07-17. KJA spoke and presented the award to son Brian Herbert.

^Neuman, Clayton (August 17, 2009). "Winds of Dune Author Brian Herbert on Flipping the Myth of Jihad." AMCtv.com (Internet Archive). Retrieved March 31, 2014. "I got a call from an estate attorney who asked me what I wanted to do with two safety deposit boxes of my dad's ... in them were the notes to Dune 7 -- it was a 30-page outline. So I went up in my attic and found another 1,000 pages of working notes."

^"Before Dune, After Frank Herbert." Amazon.com (2004). Retrieved November 12, 2008. "Brian was cleaning out his garage to make an office space and he found all these boxes that had "Dune Notes" on the side. And we used a lot of them for our House books."

^"Interview with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson." Arrakis.ru (2004). Retrieved November 12, 2008. "We had already started work on House Atreides ... After we already had our general outline written and the proposal sent to publishers, then we found the outlines and notes. (This necessitated some changes, of course.)"

^Ascher, Ian (2004). "Kevin J. Anderson Interview." DigitalWebbing.com (Internet Archive). Retrieved July 3, 2007. "... we are ready to tackle the next major challenge — writing the grand climax of the saga that Frank Herbert left in his original notes sealed in a safe deposit box ... after we'd already decided what we wanted to write ... They opened up the safe deposit box and found inside the full and complete outline for Dune 7 ... Later, when Brian was cleaning out his garage, in the back he found ... over three thousand pages of Frank Herbert's other notes, background material, and character sketches."

^Adams, John Joseph (August 9, 2006). "New Dune Books Resume Story." SciFi.com (Internet Archive). Retrieved December 19, 2007. "Anderson said that Frank Herbert's notes included a description of the story and a great deal of character background information. 'But having a roadmap of the U.S. and actually driving across the country are two different things,' he said. 'Brian and I had a lot to work with and a lot to expand...'"